Document Management

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The official documentation is at: http://docs.alfresco.com

OverviewBusiness Benefits
Document management is critical to any organization, whether it is used for compliance, customer service, business continuity, or effective collaboration. Today, users want the simplicity of a departmental solution, with simple to configure applications; whereas corporations want the consistent control and compliance of a scalable, robust content management system. Alfresco offers the industry leading, open source document management system to capture, search, and collaborate on documents with full library services and lifecycle management on a unified, robust repository.

Table of Contents

• 1 Traditional Document Management


• 2 Alfresco Document Management


• 3 Content Contribution


• 4 Content Categorization


• 5 Advanced Search


• 6 Data Management and Transformation Engine


• 7 Library Services


• 8 Team Collaboration


• 9 Integrated Workflow


• 10 Security


• 11 Benefits

Traditional Document Management

Traditional document management has its roots in complex document vaults accessed by document librarians. These have historically been developed as large, complex, enterprise software applications.

This has caused document management systems to be:

• Complex and difficult to use
  
• Very costly
  
• Very low adoption rate - typically 5% of users
  

The choice of a complex, robust document system or a simple to use system that lacks essential features has resulted in a very low adoption rate. The systems that users are familiar with and use are:

• Shared drive for storage
  
• Email for Collaboration
  
• Google for search
  
• Yahoo for categorization
  
• Folder structures and content for project plans
  

Alfresco Document Management

Alfresco offers document management using familiar interfaces to get rapid user adoption built on a repository that offers transparent, out-of-sight services for full ECM:

• Virtual File System - Replace shared drives and offer the same interface
  
• Email-like rules - Configure plug-in rules to automate manual processing and offer out-of-sight compliance
  
• Google–like search - Search directly from Firefox or IE7
  
• Yahoo-like browsing - Automatic meta-data extraction and categorization
  
• SmartSpaces - Best practice collaboration spaces
  
• Transparent lifecycle support
  

Content Contribution

• Virtual File System making ECM as simple as a shared drive
  
• CIFS Briefcase Synchronization
  
• Portal Access - JSR-168
  

Content Categorization

• Automatic MetaData Extraction and categorization from all Interfaces
  

Advanced Search

• Native OpenSearch from Firefox or IE7 across multiple Alfresco repositories and also other Open Search repositories
  

Data Management and Transformation Engine

• Transformation Services - Office to ODF/PDF, PowerPoint to Flash.
  

Library Services

• Check-In/Out - minor and major version control
  
• Auditing - who created, who updated, when created, when updated
  
• Document cross linking - across multiple spaces
  

Team Collaboration

• Space Wizard - Best practice of folder structure, content, templates, rules and processes
  
• Forum Support - threaded discussions
  
• Simple Email Based Workflow - embedded URL, approve/reject
  
• Email and RSS change notification
  
• Portal Deployment (incl. Liferay)
  

Integrated Workflow

• jBPM and  Activiti Integration - complex workflow support
  
• Dashboard Task Management
  
• Compliance - Secure Document Lifecycle Management
  

Security

• Security and user management with users, groups and roles
  
• Document Level Security
  
• Single Sign-On through NTLM or LDAP
  

Benefits

Alfresco delivers:

• Dramatically increased user adoption - for all users across systems
  
• Dramatically reduced cost and TCO
  
• Reduced risk
  
• Rapid deployment